- Report argues AI agents are evolving from assistants into autonomous buyers capable of initiating, negotiating, and settling transactions - AI-influenced spending already reached US$67 billion during the 2025 holiday season, while Google, Visa, Shopify, Stripe, Coinbase and OpenAI are building core infrastructure for machine-driven commerce |
Morph today released a new industry report arguing that artificial intelligence is evolving beyond chatbots and assistants into autonomous economic actors capable of making purchases and settling transactions on behalf of users.
Titled The Agentic Economy, the report examines the rise of “agentic commerce” — a new category of economic activity where AI agents can discover products, compare prices, negotiate terms, and execute payments autonomously.
According to the report, AI-influenced spending reached US$67 billion globally during the 2025 holiday season, while Adobe recorded a 693% year-on-year increase in generative AI-driven retail traffic. McKinsey estimates the long-term market opportunity for agentic commerce could eventually exceed US$1 trillion in U.S. retail alone.
The report argues that some of the world’s largest payments and technology companies are already laying the groundwork for this transition. Visa recently confirmed “hundreds of secure agent-initiated transactions” across its ecosystem, while Google expanded its Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) with more than 60 launch partners and native stablecoin settlement support. Shopify, Stripe, Mastercard, Coinbase and OpenAI are also building infrastructure related to machine-driven commerce.
“Most people would say they do not fully trust AI agents today. But consumers have historically traded control for convenience surprisingly quickly,” said Renna Ba, Head of Ecosystem.
“Consumers don’t wake up and decide they trust AI agents completely. They may simply become accustomed to delegating small decisions until delegation itself becomes normal.”
Among the report’s predictions:
Agent-influenced commerce will exceed US$500 billion in global GMV by 2028
AI agents will overtake humans in commercial stablecoin payments
One in 10 U.S. households will regularly allow AI agents to make purchases on their behalf by 2028
The report argues that stablecoins may become increasingly important in this environment because machines require payment systems that are programmable, always online, low-cost, and globally interoperable.
For developers building AI-powered applications and agents, Morph has open-sourced “Morph Skills,” a toolkit designed to let AI systems execute blockchain actions — including wallet functions, token swaps, and stablecoin payments — through natural language instructions.
For interviews or additional comments by Renna Ba, please contact Deborah Tan-Pink at deborah.tanpink@morphl2.io.
To access the full report, please visit https://morph.network/agentic_economy_report.